Is it possible the decline in American pro football fans is directly related to the protests?

Gallup editor Jeffrey Jones is hesitant to pin it all on that. “The anthem situation is the latest, but not the only controversy that has dogged professional football,” he writes on Gallup’s website. “In recent years, the NFL has come under fire for its handling of domestic violence cases involving players and its response to research on the effects of concussions on brain health among former players.”

But additional insights from Gallup’s survey suggest the anthem controversy is having an impact. Republicans identifying as fans of pro football fell 15% and Independents fell 12%, while Democrats only fell by 3%.

That leaves what Gallup calls a “significant party gap” in NFL fans: 66% of Democrats and only 55% of Republicans identify as fans of pro football. Of course, it is possible that the gap is due to some other common reason felt more strongly by Republicans than Democrats, but the suggestion is that Republicans are outraged by the player protests, or at least following Trump’s lead, while Democrats are less so.

NBA, NHL, pro soccer rise

As part of the survey, Gallup also asked about other sports. Football was one of only two sports to see a significant drop from five years ago; the other was Olympic sports, which fell 12 percentage points and isn’t likely to get much help from the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, though it still has the biggest chunk of fans, at 63% of Americans. Pro baseball and college basketball saw drops of 2 percentage points each.

“Every other sport measured in the Oct. 10- Oct. 11 survey,” writes Gallup’s Jones, “did not change meaningfully from five years ago.”

But even though Jones labels the other swings not meaningful, it’s worth comparing them to football’s considerable drop. The comparisons paint a troubling picture for pro football.